Day four of five off work. I keep checking my work app to see if any more shifts have been cancelled. Pointless today, being Sunday of course. As long as I don’t drop below three shifts a week, it should be just about ok. It fast becoming apparent that the vaccine program is stalling. Very quickly too. Over the course of only a handful of days we went from vaccinating round two thousand a day to less than seven hundred. Numbers have dropped through the floor. So the penny drops, finally… I need another job. Again. I’ve been so focussed on the vaccine role that I stopped looking at what comes next. The months fly by so quick, and before long, I’ll be up a certain creek without a certain instrument… Again. After earning so well out of the vaccine roles, it’s going to be quite a dramatic drop in income.
I’ve spent so long in healthcare now and gained so much knowledge and so many healthcare certificates, it seems insane to me not to try and take it somewhere. I’m going to put it out there and see what happens. The Cosmos seems determined to do whatever the fuck it likes to me so let’s see what it brings this time. Have I not paid my dues? Am I not deserving of a break? Maybe even a little stability? Gods forbid. It just goes to show to me that Karma is utter nonsense. Bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people. We see it all the time.
I’m starting to realise that the soul food I get from my job is addictive. I can’t emphasise that enough. I look back over the last year, and even when things were truly awful, like when we had the inquest, I always felt a little better at work. My colleagues all felt the same. We had each others back too. A true team. The moments of comradery and empathy I saw and experienced was breathtaking at times. That “safe” feeling again. Strange, as hardly any of us have stayed in touch since. Doing a good thing like that, paid or not, makes me feel good. If I didn’t have to work, I’d probably have volunteered anyway.
That was a week ago. Over the last week, I’ve had various shifts cut and changed. More financial stress. I’ve had to do some crazy things to keep us above water over the last few months, but it has worked. So far.
The last few days have been an emotional nightmare. That emotional freight train keeps trying to rear it’s ugly head. Did I mention?…
I hate trains…
I’ve spent more time crying in the last 48 hours than I have in weeks, if not months. It’s Precious’ birthday at the end of the month. It also marks the second anniversary of My Lady going into hospital, never to come out. Two weeks after that it’s the second anniversary of My lady’s death. The triggers started early this time. I miss her so fucking much. It’s randomly hitting me, making me hyperventilate all of a sudden again and again. I’ve not had that since the early days. Everyone, even the doctor, thought my heart was going to give out back then. If only. Part of me still wishes it had. I’ve felt it slowly building since the run up to Christmas. I’m compelled to play emotional songs again. I can’t afford to wallow too much though. I’ve done a great job of hiding my turmoil from my Princeling but I don’t think I can hide it much longer. I’m starting to overreact to some things. The loneliness is getting unbearable. The only regular human contact I’ve had other than my Princeling, is with my colleagues and the patients at work. As you can imagine, as lovely as my colleagues are, I can’t truly be myself with them. Conversely, there are some new aspects of my personality that I only express at work. Weirdly, I could stay at work most days just to be around people I like and like me, when my Princeling isn’t home. There are a couple of colleagues that I’ve bonded with more than the rest. Hopefully I’ll get to keep at least one of them. I could do with a new and different friend in “real” life. The only people I see at home is my dear friend and adopted brother (rare) and my musical compadre. Talking of which he came round on Friday night. It was nice to watch the Machine Head Happy Hour with someone else for a change. We stayed up until stupid o’clock drinking (lightly), jamming and talking guitar all night. I always enjoy my evenings with him. Aside from him being a thoroughly decent chap, he and his partner are the only musicians I know. Work Husband lives in a different city so he can’t just drop in.
But that’s it. No one else comes to my home, ever. I’m racking my brains to see if I’m wrong but other than a visit by Work Husband a month or two ago, there’s been no one else. Nada, zilch, none. It’s getting on for years now. Crazy. Long gone are the days of fun socials, smoking and drinking and laughing all evening. We often liked to play Risk too. The memory feels like someone else’s sometimes. Weird… I know.
I noticed I’ve stopped checking in on people recently. No one is checking in on me either, apart from my musical compadre. Oh well. I’d already accepted that I was on my own in this new life I didn’t ask for, nor want, but I don’t have the emotional capacity to be a friend to anyone right now, never mind a good friend. It’s all I can do to not have a meltdown. They will all drift away at this rate. It’s been happening for months anyway, looking back.
Don’t misunderstand me. This is not a “poor me” control drama. Quite the opposite. I bear zero ill feeling to anyone. The whole world has their own mental health issues to deal with. I just find these things notable is all. It’s funny, when you accept you’re on your own and then life goes “True dat”. The thing is, no one can save me from my plight. That’s the whole point. Checking in or not, no one can feed what I crave. You have no idea what it’s like to crave something so bad, and yet knowing no one can fill the void. I’m also aware that I’m probably still emotionally vulnerable even now. I feel myself drawn to anyone who shows the slightest empathy. All platonic, male, female, old, young, but it freaks me out nonetheless. Every time it happens, I push it, and them, away again. Don’t bant it. But I do at the same time. I want something but I don’t know what. Will these contradictions ever end? The conclusion I’ve come to is that the best thing is for me to be a billy no mates hermit and get on with it.
I hate this time of year… So much.
Each time the emotional freight train hits, I crush it down but it’s taking longer and getting harder each time. It’s happened in the kitchen several times in the last couple of days and every time, I get a flashback to those early days, hyperventilating and desperately trying (and failing) to scream through my crying and yet at the same time trying not to make a sound so my Princeling doesn’t hear me. I haven’t felt like this for a long time. Yesterday was bad, real bad. In the end I got one of my guitars down and did my thing for a few hours. If nothing else, it was a useful distraction. I don’t practise anywhere near enough. I serviced my old Yamaha Pacifica recently and tuned it to E standard. E standard is the default tuning for most every day things. I’ve not played in E standard for a while and it was nice to play some Pink Floyd for a change, among other things.
My Princeling mentioned last night that he was going to to some mixing and maybe some vocals with his pal. It put the biggest smile on my face. Hearing him messing around upstairs inspired me to have a look at all the projects I’ve started and not finished (all of them) and I even added simple reggae riff over one of them. Seems I retained a lot of my 2020 guitar/recording journey. If you ever have an idea, record it straight away, even if it’s on your phone. So I did.
I finally told my Princeling I was struggling this morning. We had a talk about it and My Lady. We don’t talk about her much and it felt good to have a talk about her together, however brief.
Even as I type, I can feel the train trying to burst through, Aliens style. There’s only so much house work I can do to distract me. I’m going to have a crack at repairing the downstairs bathroom ceiling in a bit. It’s mad. It doesn’t matter how many days I have off, I could literally be working every moment I’m awake, if you include repairs and so on. It’s the pit stops that are the problem. The second I stop working, the thoughts burst in again. Sure, I can control them better these days but it’s getting so hard. I keep saying how much I hate this time of year and I do, lot’s, but there will simply be a different set of problems after that, no doubt just as stressful. Ad infinitum. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to relax financially? Even if I end up on a poor salary, any stability would be just what I need. I can find other ways of clearing my debt even if my wages are poor but reliable.
I’ve spent the last few hours repairing the ceiling. It’ll never look right, as the rest of it has swirled artex but at least its fixed and I can paint it. It just needs sanding first. The painting can wait. I don’t even know if we still have white emulsion. I did dinner while it was drying. I cooked a chicken pasta the other night and tubbed three portions up.
I noticed last night when in bed that my phone had an alarm set for 4:20 am. What the hell? No wonder I’m not sleeping well. How did I not know though? Whatever. I’m sending Precious’s birthday package today for her birthday tomorrow. It really doesn’t seem like much. I wish I could do more. So tomorrow starts the two weeks of anniversary hell. Two whole weeks. I try not to wind myself up over it but it’s hard. Flashbacks aplenty this time last year and they started earlier this year. All I can think about is getting through the two weeks without being sectioned.
The Life and Times of Lord Crookedhorn. 